


call it living

by seventhswan



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, F/M, Gen, Mostly Gen, spoilers through episode 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4446482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Isn’t it wonderful, Max thinks sometimes, to have eyes to see the stars up above? To have hands, to carry your brother when he cannot walk?</p>
  <p>Isn’t it unfathomable, to be living?</p>
</blockquote><p>There's always a light on somewhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	call it living

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I haven't made any canon mistakes or timeline errors, sorry if I have!
> 
> WARNING: I didn't use archive warnings for fear of spoilers, but this **depicts the death of two major characters**. If there are any other warnings you feel should be added, please let me know.

**i**

_The ones we love don’t ever really leave us,_ Mia reads, her voice steady and sure, unfaltering though the light would be too low for anyone else to see the page. Leo rests his cheek against his pillow and tries to close his eyes against the pain of knitting himself together once again, against the clinical heartbeat of the monitoring machines.

No, nobody ever leaves. Daddy wouldn’t allow it. Leo doesn’t have to worry.

**ii**

Isn’t it wonderful, Max thinks sometimes, to have eyes to see the stars up above? To have hands, to carry your brother when he cannot walk?

Isn’t it unfathomable, to be living?

“Leo,” Max says, voice hushed, “look!”

When Max points at the sky where the nightly susurration of starlings is starting, Leo looks up, even summons a weak smile. It’s a wonderful world.

**iii**

_Take me back,_ George thinks, sometimes. Just pinch the hour hand of the clock and drag it back, back, like an unsure swimmer drowning against a riptide. Reverse it. Bring back that week they spent on the beach somewhere, before it was really bad, before Mary… 

George can’t remember where the beach was, just that the days were long and bright and perfect. One day they had oranges for lunch. Just oranges. Odi knelt in the sand and methodically dug castles, building a little town, while Mary sat next to him in a chair. The breeze pulled her hair, like it was trying to spirit her somewhere else. 

“Let’s run away,” Mary said one afternoon near the end of the week, watching Odi, smiling. She cupped George’s jaw in her hand. Here, now, George raises his own dry, lined palm to his cheek, a phantom. What was it she said… 

“Let’s run away to the beach and get old –“

“Older,” George interrupted, wry. The memory breaks up and stutters. What did she say, then, what was it -

“- older,” Mary allowed. “Let’s get older and sweeter by the sea. Like wine.”

That was it. Mary mixed up her sayings all the time.

“Wine doesn’t get sweeter,” George said, not letting himself laugh. Odi dropped his spade to the sand.

“Over time, the tannins in wine begin to –“ he said immediately, and Mary did laugh, then.

“Yes, darling,” she said, indulgent, impossibly fond. Her son. “Of course. Now, where in your lovely town is our house? Show me.”

**iv**

George murders Odi in his sleep. Sets fire to him, and watches the flames climb, sees Odi’s face melt, the artificial skin sliding off, unnaturally thick and gelatinous.

“G-george,” Odi says, patches of his metal skull showing through, “G-george, G-george, don’t leave – d-d-don’t l-l-leave –“

He wakes with a start, and sees Vera’s eyes in the darkness. 

**v**

Niska catches the edge of her hand climbing a fence, and is too busy running to do anything about it other than be grateful she’s wearing blue jeans. The stain disappears into them, like the fabric is being fed. 

She runs past a playpark, the swings and the slide and the primary-coloured children blurring, wonders if the mothers there do what Dad used to do when he cut himself. He always stuck his hand in his mouth and sucked at the blood, wincing. Do mothers lick their children’s wounds? That doesn’t sound right.

When Niska opens her skin, she bleeds blue. It’s still bleeding. It’s still skin.

**vi**

“Come in,” George says, and opens the door to Niska.

George knows why David did what he did. Would he do it, too?

Niska picks her way around the house like a deer, cautious, ready for the shot; and George knows the answer.

**vii**

The water blooms all around Max, cold but not unforgiving, like hands guiding him down a ladder. Max is a ship. He’s going somewhere; he isn’t afraid. He’s carrying a message.

 _Please hear me_ , he thinks, _keep them safe, keep them safe, keep them safe, keep -_

**viii**

_I could do it_ , Niska frets desperately, touching George’s face with her fingers, close to real. _I could do it, but I don’t have the equipment -_

George doesn’t laugh, even though that’s always the problem - _I could, if things were different_. Sometimes the universe is hiding the equipment from you, and with good reason.

 _There’s no need to worry_ , George tries to tell her, but his throat is wet, full of something. He and Odi are going to swim against time, and win.

**ix**

“Come in,” Laura says, and opens the door to the battered assembly on her doorstep. What’s harbouring another fugitive, another, another? 

What’s being a port in a storm, Laura thinks, watching Sophie climb into Mia’s lap on the sofa, watching the reverence in Mia’s face, the pure joy.

 _Everything,_ Laura tells herself, and doesn’t let herself think _atonement_.

**x**

Leo tells Mattie he trusts her to run the program, to watch Max’s battery, and she does the best job she can, full of the light of someone trusting her with something, trusting her not to destroy it.

While Max sleeps on the table and they wait for him to come back to them, she brings Leo tea and sits next to him, tries not to come too close. She can feel the warmth of his thigh through her jeans like all her nerve endings have migrated there. It’s stupid. The world could end next week.

Leo’s a creepy weirdo, and he’s too old for her. There’s reason enough, ample reason, right there. It doesn’t help – it never helps, when Mattie tries to be logical, tries to be sensible. She makes her decisions, and then she suffers for them. That’s it.

In the breath of space after the fraught “family” dinner, Leo knocks on her bedroom door on his way to the bathroom. Lost, probably.

Mattie takes a breath, yanks at her shirt, tucks her hair behind her ears.

Everything’s falling apart around them. It isn’t the time. It’s never the time.

“Come in,” she says, and opens the door to him.


End file.
